Len Hjalmarson has been churning out some really good stuff lately on missional orders, monasticism, and related themes. I don’t know how he does it — I can barely keep up reading, let alone writing like that!

In the riddles section this week, we’ve got that age-old chicken question answered by a variety of famous people.Caesar: To come, to see, to conquer.Salvador Dali: The fish.Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.Bob Dylan: How many roads must one chicken cross?Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn’t cross the road; it transcended it.Robert Frost: To cross the road less traveled by.Gilligan: The traffic started getting rough; the chicken had to cross. If not for the plumage of its peerless tail, the chicken would be lost. The chicken would be lost!Johann Friedrich von Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.Newton: Chickens at rest tend to stay at rest. Chickens in motion tend to cross the road.Jack Nicholson: ‘Cause it (censored) wanted to. That’s the (censored) reason.More (via)

I’m still not caught up with my blog reading (or writing), but I’m making some headway this week. More linkage to follow, but here’s the crop for this week:

Chris Seay’s vision for The Voice goes back 15 years to his early attempts to celebrate the beauty and truth of the biblical narrative. As western culture moved into what is now referred to as postmodernism, Chris struggled with a deep desire to preach the whole story of God. Much like the Hebrews at the time of the New Testament, emerging generations today connect with story rather than isolated facts. Too often, preaching is reduced to articulating truth statements somehow hidden in a complex, powerful, and redemptive story. Jesus taught through parables and metaphors; modern Christians have attempted to translate His teaching into a system of irrefutable fact statements and something seems to be getting lost in the translation.

Hence, a group of writers, poets, scholars, pastors, and storytellers have committed to work together to bring the Scriptures to life in a way that celebrates both beauty and truth.

The result is a retelling of the Scriptures: The Voice, not of words, but of meaning
and experience.

In Jesus’ day, shepherds were called “dirt people” and were ceremonially unclean most of the time, so nobody really wanted to have much to do with them. Still, it’s a recurring metaphor for the pastor (some languages, like Portugese, use the same word for the two roles), and many pastors view themselves this way. If that sounds familiar, Bill Kinnon has some words for you… words that Brant Hansen couldn’t leave alone.

12 bucks to link to an AP story? AP just does not get it… meaning Internet culture, fair use, and common sense. A number of bloggers are now simply refusing to link to them, denying them of the traffic that would have resulted in ad revenue for them. Stooo-pid. But it gets better: reporting on the story, AP does to Techcrunch what they won’t let anyone do with their material… they quote an excerpt. Good for the goose but not the gander?

Life in Christ should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, ‘WOW – What a ride!’

Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you. — Frederick Buechner

Who are your heroes in real life?
Let’s go with Jesus. Not the gay-hating, war-making political tool of the right, but the outcast, subversive, supreme adept who preferred the freaks and lepers and despised and doomed to the rich and powerful. The man Garry Wills describes “with the future in his eyes … paradoxically calming and provoking,” and whom Flannery O’Connor saw as “the ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of [one’s] mind.”